There’s a growing call for the United Nations to extend its proclaimed “International Decade for People of African Descent.” The original declaration was announced by the U.N. General Assembly in 2013. It proclaimed the years 2015 through the end of 2024 as a time to promote wider recognition, stronger avenues to justice, and the social and economic development of Black communities in nations throughout the world. However, as the end of that decade approaches with the coming of 2024, many are saying the decade was not enough time to truly examine and promote the concerns of Black communities.
Tensions between the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams spike this past week over elements of the asylum seeker crisis, with both sides digging in their heels. Meanwhile, the care for some 70,000 newly arrived migrants hangs in the balance.
The Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) releases its newest report, “The Notorious and True History of NYC’s Finest.” The report heavily highlights the relationship between New
York City police and the Black residents they serve, dating back to the 1800s New York
Kidnapping Club, a circle of “fugitive” slave-catchers and pre-NYPD cops who snatched and sold Black New Yorkers into southern bondage. A later excerpt details reporting by the Amsterdam News on the regular police brutality lawsuits against the NYPD in Harlem during the 1950s.
Rowan D. Wilson, 62, Governor Kathy Hochul’s second nominee for New York State Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, is appointed after the Senate Judiciary Committee spectacularly rejected her first nominee.
Tracy McCarter graduates from Columbia University with a master’s in advanced clinical management and leadership after facing 25 years to life in prison when she was charged with second-degree murder in the 2020 stabbing death of her estranged husband, James Murray. McCarter maintained self-defense. Her high-profile case played a pivotal role in the Manhattan District Attorney election, with DA Alvin Bragg—who tweeted his support for McCarter during his campaign—pressured to follow through and discard the office’s prosecution against her.
Rideshare workers urge the governor and the MTA to refrain from imposing what they deem as a double tax on them and their jobs. The Independent Drivers Guild, which says it represents many of the city’s rideshare drivers (as well as drivers in New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Florida), plans to rally in front of the governor’s offices in Manhattan on Friday, June 2, and deliver a petition that calls on Hochul to recognize that the proposed Central Business District (CBD) Tolling Program would amount to a second tax on for-hire vehicle (FHV) drivers.
Rashid Ali Bynum, 28, of Portsmouth, Virginia, is linked to the death of Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, 30, after investigators traced his travels on February 1 using his cellphone and vehicle location data.
Federal prosecutors charge Jay Bryant, 49, in the death of Jason “Jay” Mizell, known professionally as Jam Master Jay. The hip hop trailblazer was shot in the head in his studio on October 30, 2002.
Bill Lee, a jazz bassist and composer whose versatility found him in demand among a varied spectrum of music icons and genres, from Duke Ellington to Odetta, Harry Belafonte, and—of course—those memorable film scores for his son Spike Lee, dies on May 24 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 94.
With hip hop’s 50th anniversary soon approaching, we’re delving into some history since its West Bronx inception in 1973. It eventually morphed into a global phenomenon, affecting aspects of society culturally, economically, educationally, politically, socially, and theologically. Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash, known as “The Hip Hop Trinity,” are recognized as its founders. Beginning as a way for local African Americans and Caribbean Americans to express themselves artistically, hip hop incorporated DJ-in’, MC-in’, B-Boyin’/B-Girlin’ (break dancin’), graffiti, and the “knowledge, wisdom, and overstanding” as “Hip Hop’s 5 Elements.”
Area youths are urged to invest time in developing their talents and using them to unite and better their communities, rather than combating each other in the streets.
NYC basketball legend God Shammgod and his son, God Shammgod, Jr., are featured in a campaign powered by Advil titled “The Show Must Go On,” which spotlights their tight bond, love of basketball, focus on coaching, and even the aches and pains that come with the sport. Just as point guard Shammgod taught his son the game, he now teaches it to NBA players in his role as a player development coach with the Dallas Mavericks.
African immigrants’ rights groups conduct a week of actions in the last week of May to point out that they cannot afford to wait years before being granted official U.S. government protection. Organizations representing immigrants from Sudan, Mali, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, and more came to Washington, D.C., to push the Biden administration to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to individuals from African nations that are unsafe to return to.
The apparent drowning deaths of two young New York City students—11-year-old Alfa Ousmane Barrie and 13-year-old Garrett Warren—are still under investigation, and still bring many to tears. At the forefront are efforts to bring Alfa’s father to the USA for the child’s burial. “We are calling on the media to ask Governor Kathy Hochul, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and Mayor Eric Adams to put pressure on the State Department to grant the visa waiver quickly to get Alfa Ousmane Barrie’s father Abdoul Barrie to the U.S. for his son’s burial,” Alfa Ousmane Barrie family spokesperson Ahmadou Diallo told the Amsterdam News.
For the eighth year in a row, Brooklyn’s Launch Charter School leadership organize a schoolwide walkout and march to raise awareness of gun violence in the community for National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
The NYC Department of Corrections (DOC) recently stops informing the public about custody deaths in the wake of the third known Rikers Island-related death this year. On Tuesday, May 30, the New York Times reported the death of Joshua Valles, who was held at Rikers’ Anna M. Kross Center jail. A DOC spokesperson confirmed the recent passing of a detainee who was released from department custody “on his own recognizance” before his death. Valles is not directly identified, although the information was provided in response to a media request in his name.
The intersection of the South Bronx’s East 165th Street and Rogers Place has been renamed “Cornell ‘Black Benjie’ Benjamin Way” to honor the 25-year-old former vice president of the Ghetto Brothers, an activist street gang. Black Benjie and the Ghetto Brothers had been working on coordinating a gang truce when the gang member-turned-peace activist was beaten to death in December 1971.
Dr. Cornel West, scholar and activist, announces in a June 5 video on Twitter that he has decided to join the 2024 presidential race on the People’s Party ticket.
Some local residents are angry after hearing the news that Gov. Kathy Hochul approved Mayor Eric Adams’s clearance for Harlem’s Lincoln Correctional Facility (31–33 West 110th Street), which closed in 2019, to be repurposed as a temporary shelter for displaced migrant workers. His administration has been grappling with finding housing for a wave of migrants who have relocated to the city in recent weeks.
Mayor Eric Adams signs a ban on discrimination because of a person’s height or weight in employment, housing, and public accommodations into law.
Several New Yorkers come out to take part in the annual #BlackBirdersWeek, which was also held in cities across the country from May 28 through June 3.
The 14th Annual NYC Multicultural Festival, held in Jackie Robinson Park Bandshell in Harlem and hosted by Joyce Adewumi, features music, dance, and delicious food from around the world. June marks not only Pride Month but also National Caribbean American Heritage Month, National Immigrant Heritage Month, and Black Music Month. Sadly, you wouldn’t know it from the prevailing media coverage, advertising, and national promotion, which primarily revolve around Pride Month.
The legendary hip hop trio the Fat Boys will receive a well-deserved honor when they are inducted into the Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF) at the LIMEHOF 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop Concert, at the LIMEHOF museum in Stony Brook (97 Main Street, Stony Brook, NY).
Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, and scholar Ama Ata Aidoo is resting in power after seven decades of an illustrious career. A renowned feminist and celebrated writer and playwright, Aidoo spent most of her early life among the Fante community, later studying at the University of Ghana and University of Cape Coast. In the U.S., she attended Brown and Stanford.
The 2023 NCAA outdoor track and field championships begin at Mike A. Myers Stadium and Soccer Field in Austin, Texas, home stadium of the University of Texas Longhorns, and will conclude on Saturday, June 10. First held at Stagg Field in Chicago in 1921, the event has been the host of some of the greatest, most accomplished, and inspiring athletes in the history of sports. Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee are some of the towering historical figures whose monumental achievements include winning NCAA outdoor track and field titles.
The weeklong convening of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) brings activists and nonprofit and governmental representatives together to talk about the concept and possibility of reparations for African enslavement; the ideals of Pan Africanism and its
suggestions for how to deal with past injustices and what to push for in the future; the racism and other difficulties people of African descent are facing as they migrate from war-torn or failing nations; methods of collecting and distributing high-quality and timely employment, economic, age, geographic, and economic statistics on Black populations; and practices communities can use to promote health and well-being, while dealing with intergenerational trauma.
Caricom—the Caribbean governments and the international community—begins three days of talks on Sunday aimed at coming up with solutions for the island’s decades-old crisis and are making sure that Haitian stakeholders are present. Frustrated by Haiti’s ongoing security and food crises, regional governments say they are putting everything into their latest effort at brokering peace in the country, which has been racked by a security crisis since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
The National Action Network house of justice hosts a lively debate between City Council District 9 candidates on Friday, June 9. The seat is currently held by Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan, who has technically dropped out of the running.
New York City finishes first in the world’s worst air pollution rankings. City officials reported the local air quality index (AQI) climbed to over 480 on a 500-scale due to smoke traveling south from the ongoing Canadian wildfires, the worst since the 1960s.
“Just over a year ago, a monster drove hundreds of miles to kill New Yorkers, Black New Yorkers,” recalls NY State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, who chairs the Assembly’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, & Asian Legislative Caucus. “On his weapon…on his gun was a phrase. And it said, ‘This is your reparations.’ Some may argue that the past is the past and that we should move on. But how can we move on when the echoes of history still reverberate in the lives of millions? How can we build a future on a foundation stained with injustice?” Members of the caucus announced on June 8 that the state is now steps closer to putting the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies in place.
President Joe Biden vetoes a bill passed by Congress that blocked his student loan forgiveness plan on June 7. The Republican-led effort throws the debt relief plan back into the air as the pause on student loans for more than 40 million borrowers is set to end in August.
After years of deliberation, the New York State Assembly and Senate finally agree to pass the Clean Slate Act, a law that will automatically clear a person’s conviction record so they can have better access to jobs and housing.
Thousands showed up to celebrate the 66th Annual National Puerto Rican Day: Since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the city in 2020, parades and festivals have been slowly returning to their former glory over the last three years.
New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, the first woman to hold the position, is stepping down after 18 months on the job. Sewell, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, announced her resignation in an email to department staff Monday afternoon.
Modern abolitionists are trying to abolish the police and prisons. To be clear, abolitionists are absolutists. Seemingly every interpretation of the practice opposes reform as a long-term goal. Prison abolitionists are ultimately not aiming to reduce the prison population or speed up the trial system—they want it completely gone. Police abolitionists aren’t advocating for better department training and replacing guns with tasers; they want the entire system to be dissolved. Yet the short-term steps taken to achieve abolition—such as working through the legal system to overturn wrongful convictions—overlaps extensively with reform.
There were a number of memorable moments in the nearly weeklong commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Wiley Evers, including the home of Medgar and Myrlie being enshrined as a national monument during the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute of Courage and Justice Gala from June 7–12 in Jackson, Mississippi.
Black Restaurant Week begins on Juneteenth. In the New York City/New Jersey area, more than 100 African American, African, and Caribbean-owned restaurants have already signed up and are ready to take part in this period of recognition.
New York City is set to establish a minimum wage rate for restaurant delivery workers. In an announcement on June 11, Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga said that New York City—famed as a place where many residents don’t mind having tiny kitchens because they’re used to having prepared foods delivered straight to their front doors––will become the first in the U.S. to have app-based delivery workers who can do their job and earn, at least, the minimum wage.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre sweeps onto the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on June 6 for what has been described as the “long-awaited return to the BAM stage after more than a decade” and is embraced by an audience that repeatedly greeted the dancers with heartwarming displays of affection and thunderous applause.
The Vegan Night Market is one of the newest vegan weekly series. It debuted in Wollman Rink at Central Park on Tuesday, June 6. This plant-based market promises customers will “enjoy the best plant-based cuisine” every Tuesday night at 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. from now until early October.
“This Land Was Made,” the brainchild of African American female playwright Tori Sampson, with direction by African American female Taylor Reynolds, features a mainly African American cast of actors who all bring their A-game to the stage. The play tells the story of Huey P. Newton, leader of the Black Panther party in Oakland California, in 1967, where an incident occurred with police.
Mae Duncan Carson, the “quiet revolutionary” wife of Robert “Sonny” Abubadika Carson, makes her transition on June 2, 2023. Born Mae Catherine Haynes in 1937 in Orangeburg, South Carolina, she came up north at age 11, and eventually met and married Ralph Duncan in Brooklyn, N.Y. They had three children: Khaba Sahu Re, Randall Duncan, and Robynn Duncan. The marriage was dissolved, and she found love again, marrying Carson and receiving the title Queen Tetisheri. They were married for more than 30 years, until he died in December 2002. Carson was the grassroots activist who inspired a movie, “The Education of Sonny Carson,” and thousands of articles and radio and television news segments.
Senbere Teferi, a two-time Olympian from Ethiopia, sets a new record of 30:12 at Saturday’s Mastercard New York Mini 10K, held in Central Park by the New York Road Runners (NYRR), by holding off Kenya’s Helen Obiri, this year’s women’s Boston Marathon winner. Teferi has the fastest time since the event’s inception in 1972.
In recognition of Juneteenth, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF) announces that $3.8 million in funds would be granted to some 40 African American U.S. sites. The AACHAF is the largest fund dedicated to supporting and preserving historic sites in the U.S. that represent African American history, such as homes, museums, centers, schools, and more. One of the sites to receive funding is the United Order of Tents Eastern District #3, the oldest Black women’s social organization in the U.S. The funds will be used to preserve their historic headquarters at the mansion (87 MacDonough Street in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn).
The racial and social justice advocacy group New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) has worked with the state’s Legislative Black Caucus since 2019 to push for passage of a New Jersey Reparations Task Force bill (A-938/S-386), but the state legislature has not pushed the bill forward. It is sponsored by Assemblymembers Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Britnee N. Timberlake, and Shavonda E. Sumter. Now NJISJ says it’s moving to begin the work of documenting the information needed for a reparations push in New Jersey and has created its own New Jersey Reparations Council.
Mayor Eric Adams and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union that represents about 120,000 municipal employees, reach a tentative five-plus-year contract agreement last week.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is struggling to defend his security forces after they failed to block a June 16 attack on a secondary school where some 39 students were murdered, and others were abducted.
The essay by Roberto Almanza, a professor at the University of Magdalena (Colombia), entitled “La Orilla de Caliban: El Rastro de la filosofia Afrocaribe en el siglo XXI (The Land of Caliban: The trail of Afro-Caribbean philosophy in the 21st century)” wins the Casa de las Américas “Black Presence in the Caribbean” award.
The third annual Juneteenth celebration, on Monday, June 19, seems to magically turn one of NYC’s busiest vehicular corridors into a vibrant live stage of beautiful original creations by an array of artists; with something of interest to both young and old. Nostrand Avenue, between Jefferson to Putnam, is closed to traffic and packed with people rhythmically swaying to sweet sounds of R&B, African drumming, and conversations about reparations and jazz.
Hip hop progenitors the Last Poets commemorate their 55th anniversary on May 19. Artistically inspired by Black Arts Movement alumni such as Amiri Baraka and Nina Simone, and socially motivated by iconic activists Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they created the template for a generation of urban artists who emerged in the succeeding decades.
A True Skool-era hip hop tribute occurs on a recent Saturday afternoon with several pioneers in attendance for the fifth annual Sha-Rock Day in honor of the culture’s first female MC. The throwback event at the Bronx’s Magenta Playground is reminiscent of back-in-the-day park jams, complete with DJs, MCs, B-Boys/B-Girls, and graf writers. It also doubles as a pre-50th anniversary of hip hop recognition, with several luminaries navigating down memory lane.
Bridging Grenadian and American culture through fashion is a unique way to launch a physical boutique. Fe Noel Little Caribbean (1133 Nostrand Avenue in Little Caribbean, Brooklyn) has done just that, and has its grand opening on Thursday, June 15. The boutique’s debut displayed its latest in-shop-only exclusive dresses, shirts, swimsuits, and more.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosts its fifth Annual Literary Festival on Saturday, June 17. This year’s theme is “Literacy is Generational Wealth.”
Just before being consecrated as the next Bishop of New York, Rev. Matthew Heyd holds a formal conversation with Presiding Bishop Rev. Michael Curry at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Friday, May 19. They talk about the direction the Episcopalian Church is heading in as it takes on issues of social justice.
The play “Flex,” written by Candrice Jones, begins previews at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and opens on July 20. It tells the story of a high school girls’ basketball team in rural Arkansas in the late 1990s shortly after the launch of the WNBA. With aspirations of going pro, these young women must first navigate the pressures of being young, Black, and female in their surroundings.
It is a somber, sometimes tearful scene on Friday, June 23, as friends and family gather at the Futa Islamic Center in Morrisania in the Bronx to funeralize 11-year-old Alfa Barrie. The Democracy Prep Harlem Middle School student was last seen in Harlem on May 12, with 13-year-old Garrett Warren. The city was put on alert as a search was launched for the two boys. On Thursday, May 18, Warren’s body was recovered from the East River. On Saturday morning, May 20, it was announced that Barrie’s body had been recovered under the Madison Avenue Bridge over the Hudson River. Multiple media sources said that the boys climbed through a hole in a fence close to the 145th Street Bridge.
As of Tuesday night, two candidates are advancing to the November election for City Council in Harlem’s District 9. Exonerated Five’s Yusef Salaam takes an early lead in the polls with 50.14% of the votes, or 5,540 votes. Assembly Member Inez Dickens has 25.02% of the votes, or 2,764 votes, while Assemblymember Al Taylor has 14.39% of the votes, or 1,590 votes.
Black and brown New Yorkers received 85% of the NYPD’s criminal summons last year, according to John Jay College’s Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ), and the number issued is up for the first time since 2017, when the Criminal Justice Reform Act funneled many such low-level offenses out of the criminal courts and into the civil justice system.
On June 22, the New York City City Council, on a unanimous voice vote, passed Resolution 0285, calling upon the president and the United States Congress to end the Cuban embargo and travel ban and remove Cuba from the U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism list.”
A coalition of organizers and the Human Services Council (HSC) spends a particularly chilly June night sleeping outside City Hall last week to demand “JustPay” for “underpaid, city-contracted essential workers.”
The LGBTQ+ community comes out to celebrate Harlem Pride 2023 on Saturday, June 24. The neighborhood’s Pride events stretches along 12th Avenue and features food, music, and informational vendors. Electeds joined with community members to celebrate the acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community and its achievements.
J. Harrison Ghee and Alex Newell make history at the 76th Annual Tony Awards on Sunday, June 11, when they became the first non-binary performers to win a Tony Award. They did so with beauty, grace, and a lot of PRIDE!
The San Antonio Spurs select Victor Wembanyama, No. 1 overall in the N.B.A. draft at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “One of the best feelings of my life,” says the Parisian-born teenager known as Wemby. “Probably the best night of my life. I’ve been dreaming about this for so long. It’s a dream come true. It’s incredible.”
New York City basketball luminary Rod Strickland has continually remained connected to his Bronx hoops roots, paying his good fortune forward in various ways. One aspect of his altruism has been the Rod Strickland Summer Basketball League, now in its 26th season. The program is the brainchild of longtime New York basketball figure and youth development professional LaMarre Dyson, who has run the league since its inception.
The number of retail jobs is on the decline in New York City. According to a report from the Center for an Urban Future (CUF), the city’s retail sector is not recovering from the pandemic in the same way other city jobs have—and the retail sector is one of the main areas young Blacks and Latinos turn to for initial employment.
Black studies scholar Charles L. Blockson dies at his home on Wednesday, June 14, at 89. The author, historian, and bibliophile was the creator of Temple University’s Charles L. Blockson Afro American Collection, which features more than 700,000 material artifacts that detail the global Black experience. The Blockson archive includes information dating from the 1500s through the 21st century.
Brooklyn-born super-middle-weight Edgar Berlanga earns a unanimous 116–108, 116-108, 118–106 over Ireland native Jason Quigley Saturday night at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Berlanga (21–0, 16 KOs) drops Quigley four times in the 12-round match, including twice in the final round, to seal the victory.
The Liberty keep stacking up wins and continuing to affirm their standing as one of the best teams in the WNBA. Their thrilling comeback victory over the Washington Mystics on Sunday improves their record to 9-3: third best in the league when they faced the Connecticut Sun Tuesday night on the road.
